Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-On-One provides a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the unique world of Adobe Illustrator.

Learning Illustrator can be a challenge for those who are used to Photoshop, but those looking to get accustomed to Adobe’s vector graphics package need look no further than Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One. At nearly 500 pages, Illustrator One-on-One covers all of AI CS5’s core features, from starting a new file, to using Illustrator’s diverse toolset, all the way to preparing artwork for print. Illustrator is more than just the pen tool, and One-on-One provides an excellent introduction to dynamic effects, gradient mesh, and OpenType, among other features.

More Than Just a Book

While the book is enough by itself, Illustrator One-on-One integrates over six hours of video lessons, created for the One-on-One series by Lynda.com. Each chapter begins with a video lesson, which provides a 20 minute screencast demonstrating the material that is about to be covered in the book. The videos are well done, and did a good job of getting me into the right frame of mind to work through the book. I also appreciated that, for the most part, readers are encouraged not to follow along with the videos so they can relax and just absorb the concepts covered. However, things do get very hands-on after the video lesson

In Depth Coverage

Each chapter of Illustrator One-on-One covers a different Illustrator feature group, but follows roughly the same structure. It begins with a written introduction to the topic being covered, as well as the video lesson for the chapter. From there the chapter moves into a series of step-by-step lessons. I found the hands-on portions of the book to be very easy to follow, and the instructions were all quite detailed. Unlike some other books, One-on-One rarely skipped or glossed over any part of the process, making it a good choice for beginners (though possibly a little tedious for more experienced users looking to brush up on the latest version of Illustrator). Each chapter concludes with a quiz reviewing the material covered.

The Little Things

What sets Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One apart from your run-of-the-mill Illustrator book, other than the videos, is the attention to small details that add up to a much improved learning experience. For instance, every time the book references an icon from Illustrator’s UI a picture of that icon is included in-line with the text. This, and other details like full color pictures, and a keyboard shortcut reference at the beginning of each chapter, is what sets Adobe Illustrator One-on-One apart from the rest of the field.

Personal Experience

I would consider myself an Intermediate level Adobe Illustrator user, and One-on-One is primarily aimed at demonstrating the fundamentals to Illustrator beginners. That said, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything to be gained in the book for those who have passed the beginner stage. I took the opportunity to dive into a couple of nice workflow features in Illustrator CS5, artboards, and color groups.

Artboards allow you to design for multiple pages and page sizes in one Illustrator document. For my purposes multiple artboards allowed me to maintain an organization icon for Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all in one document. Each site uses a different size icon, and while Illustrator artworks scales to any size I prefer maintain pixel width strokes.

Color groups are collections of color swatches in Illustrator. Illustrator allows you to create a new color group from a selecton of objects. All of the colors in the selection are saved as swatches in the color group.

This feature, however, provides more than just a way to organize your swatches. Illustrator’s Recolor Artwork feature allows you to convert your vector graphics from one color group to another. In the screenshots below I experimented with converting the logos to a couple of Illustrator’s built-in seasonal pallettes.

In Conclusion

Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One combines video and step-by-step lessons to help new users jump right into the world of Adobe Illustrator. While this book might be too basic for more advanced users, I’d recommend it as an excellent introduction to Adobe Illustrator CS5 for beginners.